Posts tagged ‘drugs’

Caffeine is the most widely used stimulant in the world and over 80% of Americans consume some form of the chemical daily—whether it’s from tea, coffee, or soda. Caffeinated drinks have been around for most of written history and they’re probably not going away anytime soon. Most societies embrace at least one form of caffeine and after a while, it’s easy to forget that it’s actually a drug.

Caffeine is a psychoactive drug

Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant—a psychoactive drug that causes increased alertness, faster locomotion, and other mental and physical changes. “Psychoactive” tends to be associated with drugs that cause visual hallucinations but it really just means that the chemical affects a person’s mental state. Both caffeine and cannabis are mild psychoactive stimulants; alcohol is a depressant or “downer.” (more…)

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If you check your medicine cabinet, chances are good you’ve got some expired medication in there. Are they still safe and effective or are they fit for the trash?

First of all, this post is for information purposes only and it is not suggesting you take any drugs after their expiration date — always check with your doctor or pharmacist before making any decisions about pharmaceuticals.

The Federal Drug Administration regulates drugs in the United States. They have extensively studied drug expiration dates for the US government. Specifically, the US military stockpiles large quantities of drugs for regular troop usage and emergencies. If those drugs are not used, the cost to replace them can be high.

The FDA found that 88% of drugs tested remained potent for a year after their expiry date; some lasted up to 14 years. Experts caution these results cannot be directly translated to your medication since the military stores their drugs in climate controlled environments that represents ideal conditions.

That said, the FDA and many in the drug industry, including one pharmacist I talked to off the record, agreed that certain drugs are still good up to a year after the expiration date.

Many popular drugs are safe after their expiration date, but there are known exceptions too. For example, Tetracycline, an antibiotic, becomes toxic and should not be taken after its expiration date. Aspirin, on the other hand, is known to be good for a while after its expiration date.

If the drugs are still good, why do drug companies put these short expiry dates on the bottles? It’s hard to say for sure, but there are a couple things we know.

1. The drug companies are required to ensure their products are 100% effective up to the expiration date. That means they need to do testing. The longer the expiration time they shoot for, the longer it will take to release a new product to market, which is bad for business and customers. In most cases, the products have at least a 1 year shelf life.

2. Every company wants you to buy as much of their product as possible. The drug companies can’t really control how much you use their product, but shorter expiration dates may convince you to buy more, even if you haven’t used all of the product yet.

To be safe, you should check with a pharmacist before taking any expired drugs. When you are ready to dispose of your medicine, check out this previous post: How to Dispose of Medicine.

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You should regularly check your medicine cabinet for expired drugs. Because, if you’re like me, it’s probably more like a time-capsule than a medicine cabinet. Yesterday, my wife excavated a teeth whitening kit of mine that expired almost 5 years ago.

When you come across unused or expired medication, you have two options: keep it or get rid of it. There is some debate about the safety and effectiveness of expired medication, but there is no debate about the risk to pets and children when they get into unused medication. Prescription medication can be extremely dangerous, in fact: the second leading cause of death in 35-54 year olds is accidental overdose.

The best way to get rid of old medication is to give it to an organization that can properly dispose of it.

Your local police department may have take back programs where you can return drugs and they will send them away to be discarded. Some local drug stores have take back programs and others, such as Walgreens, sell special envelopes that can be used to mail your drugs to a proper disposal facility.

If professional disposal is not available to you, the next option is to discard the drugs in your own trash. The FDA, and other experts, recommend putting the discarded drugs in a small Ziploc bag and mixing item with undesirable waste such as coffee grounds or kitty litter. This reduces the chance of pets and children finding them or being interested in them if they do find them.

The FDA also maintains a small list of medications that you can flush down the toilet, because they could be potentially dangerous to pets or children if found in the trash. Some of the common ones include demerol, percocet, oxycontin and morphine.

Although flushing these drugs is better than putting them in the trash, sending the drugs away for proper disposal is always the best option. Professional disposal reduces the probability that the drugs will end up in the water supply that we, and many other species, rely on.